Ars at CES 2013 —

Vegas in full swing: a CES centerfold

Ars' CES detachment documents their journey through the convention center.

The Ars crew stayed at the Las Vegas Hotel, conveniently located right next to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Chris Foresman

January 8th is Elvis Presley's birthday! So glad we didn't forget this year.

Andrew Cunningham

Plenty had already happened at CES, but the show floor didn't even open until Tuesday.

Andrew Cunningham

Ridin' the escalator in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Lee marvels at the flexibility of Canon's 24-105mm f/4 L-series lens, which he rented to use at CES.

Chris Foresman

Florence posing in front of JVC's 3D camera.

A jar of earphone caps.

Casey Johnston

Kyle tries out this rad Thrustmaster racing and flight simulation setup. Complete with a force feedback chair and three screens, it can be yours for the low, low price of $40,000. The steering wheel alone is a cool $600.

Kyle Orland

A particularly nasty bump in the virtual racing seat knocks a wisp of balding hair out of place.

Kyle Orland

In the future, this is what clothes will look like.

Chris Foresman says: I'm personally not a fan of iPhone cases, but I grew to like the new ampjacket while at CES. The lightweight case acts as a passive amplifier for the iPhone's built in speaker, and it still fits comfortably in your pants pocket.

Chris Foresman

LaCie had its new limited edition, designer hard drive on hand at CES. The heavy, solid metal chassis was designed by Philippe Starck and bears a passing resemblance to the mega-yacht he designed for the late Steve Jobs.

There are hundreds of companies hawking cases and headphones for iPhone and Android users. Trying to stand out from the crowd can lead to products like this: plush, animal print headphones with built-in ears.

Chris Foresman

Imagination Technology's Caustic R2500 ray tracing card: something cool that you'll actually be able to buy later this month.

Andrew Cunningham

iRobot demonstrates a telepresence doctor roaming the showfloor aisles, just looking for sick people, I guess.

Kyle Orland

If this portable NES/SNES combo with TV output and controller inputs had come out in 1993 or so, I would have wet my pants with excitement.

Kyle Orland

Since thousands of tech journalists are covering CES, the press room fills up quickly.

Chris Foresman

The new Nessie USB microphone from Blue is sort of an evolution of its affordable Snowball. It has built-in DSP hardware for dynamic, adaptive processing specifically for voice and music recording.

Chris Foresman

LEGO Mindstorms EV3 is built around this third-generation Mindstorms power brick, which can connect to a smartphone or tablet for remote control.

This little guy is one of the five robot designs included with the new LEGO Mindstorms EV3.

Canon was showing off its perplexing PowerShot N camera, which is purportedly designed to "maximize creativity." The tiny digicam has unusual zoom and shutter controls which are actually metal rings around the lens.

Polaroid is the latest camera company to jump on the Android camera bandwagon. Its new camera will ship with 4.1 Jellybean.

Chris Foresman

Nikon was showing off its newest DSLR, the mid-range D5200. It has a 24MP APS-C size sensor, an articulating LCD display, and tons of buttons and dials.

Reminds me of the years I spent covering CES at my old job. I do not envy you guys one bit. People who have never done it imagine that it's like a vacation but honestly I'd rather be doing regular work than frantically trying to cover all the different things that I needed to cover in the time allowed.

Of course this was years ago when there was actually a lot of interesting stuff to cover. Not sure if you guys are having that problem, or the other problem of trying to find things that are interesting.

- a robotic toy version of Wall•E- a photo of a woman on a stationary bike watching a video screen of a CGI character riding a bike- a photo of a series of people lounging out in some sort of massage chairs(live action scenes from the animated movie - hmm)

Reminds me of the years I spent covering CES at my old job. I do not envy you guys one bit. People who have never done it imagine that it's like a vacation but honestly I'd rather be doing regular work than frantically trying to cover all the different things that I needed to cover in the time allowed.

Yeah, I covered CES one year (2007) and had enough. I live in Vegas so I get the comfort of sleeping in my own bed at night, still wasn't terribly fun (possibly because I cant drink at the evening parties since I have to drive home, instead of drunkenly stumble back to the hotel room).

Is anyone else thinking that the Canon PowerShot N is actually a brilliant camera design?Zoom ring around the lens, more akin to a DSLR (& shutter control whatever that entails)Plus that folding screen. For a little point and shoot im quite impressed.Assuming image quality isn't terrible.

"The tiny digicam has unusual zoom and shutter controls which are actually metal rings around the lens."

Not at all unusual. If you're old enough to sign a model release, that's where those controls have always been and it's where they should be.

Zoom ring, sure, but shutter control? At first I thought it meant 'shutter release' but I guess it could mean shutter speed control, which would make more sense but is still a bit odd to go on a ring around the lens; it's usually (on cameras that have such things – the Fuji X100 and the Leica M9 being recent examples) on a dial on the top.

That pic of us all together was actually taken in a ginormous SUV limo (cheaper than cabs for 9 people!) on the way to dinner, wherein the limo driver informed us that we had to pay in cash. There was a sudden flurry of cash-grabbing to ensure that we could cover the ride.

As for me, I always stick my tongue out when I have cash in my hands. It's a reflex.

Thanks for the photos, especially those of the staff. I found the press room with desktops a little odd and anachronistic.

Seriously. Do people/companies even purchase giant desktop computers anymore, or did the CES event staff lease these from the unsold holiday inventory of HP or Dell? Also, I find it hard to believe that there are people who show up to CES in need of a shared computer; very anachronistic.

Thanks for the photos, especially those of the staff. I found the press room with desktops a little odd and anachronistic.

Seriously. Do people/companies even purchase giant desktop computers anymore, or did the CES event staff lease these from the unsold holiday inventory of HP or Dell? Also, I find it hard to believe that there are people who show up to CES in need of a shared computer; very anachronistic.

Ars' CES detachment documents their journey through the convention center

Ars's CES detachment documents its journey through the convention?

Genitive proper nouns ending in s (and x) have 's on the end because that's how it's pronounced, plus ars is singular.

I know it's common British English and I'm a brit, but it still drives me crazy when nouns that signify a grouping of individuals are treated as plural. I prefer singular nouns to stay singular except where the context demands it.

We've all got Canons--I believe Aurich noted in a previous post that Conde standardized on those so that we could swap lenses as needed.

Just to be clear *Ars* standardized on them, not Condé. We've been a Canon shop since before the acquisition, has nothing to do with anyone else's call. And yes, it's much easier to stay with one brand so that things can be traded around, troubleshooting is standardized, etc.

It was my call to go with Canon, I could have steered it in another direction, so blame me if you're a Nikon fan, but honestly it was the path of least resistance; several of us were already using Canons, and it's happened that most staff who've joined us since have already owned Canons, so it was the right call.

"The tiny digicam has unusual zoom and shutter controls which are actually metal rings around the lens."

Not at all unusual. If you're old enough to sign a model release, that's where those controls have always been and it's where they should be.

Actually, this is not at all like the zoom controls on an SLR lens. I guess is it arguably similar to the power zoom lenses from Pentax and Minolta in mid-90s, but even still, it's totally awkward on this kind of camera.

And yes, the other ring around the lens is a shutter release, not a shutter speed control, which as another commenter noted was usually on a dial. Olympus SLRs has a shutter speed dial around the lens mount, though, and the aperture rings were usually on the outside of the lens, away from the body.